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Supreme Court Bans Jehovah’s Witnesses

Russia’s Supreme Court has banned Jehovah’s Witnesses from the country.

The court made the decision after describing the group as an extremist organization.

Four former members of the Jehovah’s Witnesses had told a Russia’s
Supreme Court how they were brainwashed by the church against receiving
higher education or starting a family.

A wtiness, Natalia Koretskaya from St. Petersburg had told the court
she had been a member of that organisation from 1995 to 2009 and had
realised over this period that the organisation’s members “were living
under full and total control of the [Jehovah’s Witnesses] Administrative
Centre.”

“The heads of the Jehovah’s Witnesses formally watch canonical
compliance with the norms but in real fact the talk is about total
control of an individual’s personal life – his intimate life, education
and work,” Koretskaya told the court.

Koretskaya said she had been expelled from the religious organisation
and its members had been banned to communicate with her after she
started close but officially unregistered relationship with a man.

“Therefore, a person turns out to be expelled into the outer world,
in which he has already forgotten how to live over the years of his stay
in the organisation,” Koretskaya added.

Justice Yury Ivanenko in his verdict on Thursday, said Russia had
decided to close down “the administrative centre of Jehovah’s Witnesses
and the local organisations in its fold and turn their property over to
the Russian Federation.”